Second Place
by Tony Stark's Hidden Side
Summary: It wasn't something most people kept track of, the number of times someone has saved your life, but the Howling Commandos did. Steve certainly hadn't intended to continue the tradition with the Avengers, but it just... happened. Only Steve knew the day Tony's count passed Bucky's. One twenty-six to one twenty-seven, and it felt like he was leaving his best friend behind. No slash.


Only Steve knew the day Tony's count passed Bucky's.

It wasn't something most people kept track of, the number of times someone has saved your life, but Steve and Bucky had saved each other so many times just in the first week of the Howling Commandos that they'd each started keeping track. When the Avengers formed, Steve was definitely _not_ planning to pick up the tradition again.

Then he figured out after the battle of New York that Tony was already at five, Natasha three, and the others all two. He decided to write it down in a little journal he kept, as a way of reminding himself that this team could be trusted.

And then more attacks started coming, Hydra cells and terrorism and alien invasions and mutants gone over to the dark side. The Avengers became an official unit, they ended up in battle together multiple times each week, Tony invited them all to the Tower to live together and they all eventually accepted, and it quickly became apparent that it was Iron Man he would have to keep track of. The tally chart of times Tony saved Steve went up on the fridge.

The first time Tony saw it, when he was searching for the orange juice, he nearly had a heart attack. Then the alarm went off, they each saved each other no fewer than five times in the ensuing melee, and Tony tacked up a piece of paper next to Steve's. He had to look over old footage and break into classified files just to remember each battle, but he could always remember exactly how many times Cap or his shield had stopped certain death.

Within weeks, Natasha and Clint were keeping a running tally (those numbers got _insanely high_ ), and everyone was keeping one for the Hulk just to lift Bruce's self-esteem. Since nobody could really "save" the Hulk, Bruce came up with another idea: he had Jarvis keep a running tally as best he could of civilians they had all directly saved. Jarvis also broke it down into individual Avengers so that Bruce could see he came in second.

And it sure helped Tony to see that (because of New York) his tally was winning by _millions._ Nobody mentioned the fact that he didn't go on a drinking binge for at least a month after Jarvis read out the number.

The tally marks kept accruing on the fridge, Natasha's "Clint Getting Me Out Alive" chart growing the fastest, Tony's "Steve Covering My Ass" the slowest (he was in the air most of the time, there just weren't that many opportunities).

And only Steve realized the day he looked over, counted up the marks, and found that Tony was rapidly approaching Captain America Saves Bucky Barnes tally. He passed it on a mission against Doombots, throwing his helmet of all things to intercept a bullet meant for Steve's head. It didn't mean anything, the fact that Iron Man had saved him more often than he had saved Bucky. That number didn't mean a single thing, he told himself, and it was true.

But then the number just kept growing.

And then it hit the "magic number" that had remained steady for decades. The number one hundred twenty-six (they had run a lot of missions, okay?). Steve's hands were shaking too badly to make the tally marks.

"What's wrong?" Natasha was the one to put a hand on his shoulder as he stood staring at the charts on the fridge. Her own chart had passed one hundred twenty-six long ago, probably before the Avengers had even started. "Steve?"

"Nothing's wrong, Nat." He wasn't sure if that was true, though. One hundred twenty-six times, he should have died, but Bucky, his oldest friend, was with him to the end of the line. It had been the end of Bucky's line, anyway. He shivered. One hundred twenty-six times, but he never got a chance to improve that count because he had _given his life for Steve Rogers._

One hundred twenty-seven times, Tony had saved him. One hundred twenty-seven times his heart should have stopped, but Iron Man made damned sure it kept on beating. Because Iron Man didn't die. Iron Man got the chance to make that number bigger and bigger.

"Okay, maybe a little bit wrong," he admitted, and realized he had broken the pen. Black ink was running over his hands. He washed it off, threw the pen in the trash, and took down his paper. Nobody else, not even Tony, followed suit.

That night, he opened up his old sketchbook. He passed the drawing of the monkey on a unicycle, the sketch he had made of Peggy's face, the full roster of the Howling Commandos, and finally he got to a page that had no drawings at all, just a list. A roster, and a count.

 **James Montgomery Falsworth - 18** He could remember two or three times that Monty (as literally only Steve called him) had tackled him out of the way of a bullet or dashed into live fire to retrieve his shield just in time to block a bullet.

 **Gabe Jones - 20** He remembered the day Gabe broke double digits. Steve bought all his drinks and everyone at the bar brought up just how many times Steve's life was in danger.

 **Jim Morita - 29** Jim and Gabe had their own special count, too: times they made Steve blush. It had, sadly, happened quite a lot, and everyone had busted their asses laughing at him. He hadn't really minded, after all, a combined count of forty-nine wasn't a bad score.

 **Peggy Carter - 32** Since Peggy hadn't gone with them into the field (...much) it had been difficult for her to pass half the Howling Commandos in score, but she had managed it. She had sent backup when it was sorely needed, going toe-to-toe with generals if she had to, and sometimes talked Howard Stark himself into flying a rescue if they were stuck in enemy territory.

 **Jacques Dernier - 34** And always, each and every time, managing to string enough expletives together to make everyone in the immediately vicinity laugh and tell Steve to have more situational awareness.

" **Dum Dum" Dugan - 49** Vastly, wildly, and above all _carefully_ surpassing even Jacques by more than a dozen, Timothy Dugan was the man who had commandeered a tank during the solo mission Captain America had carried out to rescue the POWs. He had taken over the unit after Steve had hit ice, or so the history books recorded. He had been the right man to do it.

 **James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes - 126, to the end of the line.**

One hundred twenty-six times Steve should have died, and Bucky had saved him with nothing more than a smirk or a bullet dropping to the ground. Sometimes Steve wasn't even aware of it until they were debriefing, and Bucky never bragged, just continually pulled his ass out of the fire. Once, in a single hour, he had added _seventeen_ points to that score.

And technically, he had been saving Steve's life (with the Commandos) longer than Tony. Technically it had taken Bucky a month longer to get to the score than it had taken Tony. And Bucky hadn't gotten a chance to fight for his record. And now it was like he was slowly getting replaced in every aspect of Steve's life, from roommate to soldier to second-in-command and now protector. So much for _to the end of the line._

Steve couldn't hold it all. He practically ran down the the gym and broke seven punching bags (and nine fingers) in quick succession. His knuckles were bloody and his bones jagged. They would heal. It would take maybe a day. He wrapped them in bandages and wished he had never started keeping track of all the times Tony Stark saved his life.

"Are you okay?"

It is said that if you speak of the devil, he shall appear. Steve wasn't sure what to make of the fact that apparently you only needed to _think_ about Tony Stark. "I'm fine."

"Was it something I did? Not that I'm apologizing - I'm just curious, Nat says you practically ripped down our cute little tally chart, you aren't mad that I'm beating you, are you? Because you only have the whole shield thing, I can fly, so I should get like a handicap or something-"

"It isn't my score I'm worried about," he bit out, and maybe if he'd put the emphasis on some word other than _my_ Tony wouldn't have noticed the pain on his face.

The man was a genius, it wasn't difficult to understand. "Oh," he said softly. "What was his number when he fell?"

"One-twenty-six." How many times had he looked at those numbers, during the war, after Bucky died? How many times had his friends drunk to those numbers, when Dum Dum broke forty and everyone was congratulating him and he simply raised his glass " _to one-twenty-six,"_ when all the Commandos combined were at three hundred eight and they toasted to the man who made up almost half those points?

Three hundred eight. One hundred twenty-six. Both numbers were frozen forever. If the Avengers lasted another few months, another few after than, if they celebrated New Year's Day with Tony and Steve still fighting side by side… how long until one man in a shiny suit who argued with his captain's orders and seemed to have no respect passed the combined total of the Howling Commandos?

"One hundred twenty-six?" Tony whistled, long and low. "During the height of World War II when you had to get in and out of enemy territory before you life was even in danger? He must have been one hell of a guy to follow you for so long."

"To the end of the line, he told me, and he followed through."

Tony nodded slowly. "You must have been a hell of a leader to them, too, if they spent so much time risking their lives and saving your ass. You know, even with all those guys cataloging all your shit for the museums, they never figured out what those numbers were for. The Howling Commandos never told."

"They wouldn't, yeah." Steve managed a small smile. "It was a private thing, everyone had them in our unit, but we never told anyone outside the units what the counts were at."

"You just told me."

And hell if that didn't bring Steve up short. He _had_ just told Tony, hadn't he? And it hadn't felt wrong, it had just felt the same as talking to Dum Dum about Bucky's frozen count when they were both tired and Steve was missing his best friend. "I guess it's because this is my unit now," he admitted. "Avenger, Commando… it's the same idea, or else I never would have kept track in the first place. Different people, different unit, but it's still my unit."

"And don't you forget it," the inventor said flippantly. Then he grew serious again. "I can just imagine the giant numbers on everyone's sheets for the number of times Captain America saved their lives."

Steve bowed his head. "Actually, I'm usually in second place," he said, not without a tiny chuckle. "Amazing, isn't it? He _died,_ and I still could never catch his record."

"He must have been a hell of a sniper." Tony smiled lightly and rested a hand on Steve's shoulder as they both thought about the past. "My father had a copy of a paper from his Commando days with numbers like that on it."

"Did he?" Steve's head snapped up. He remembered Howard's paper, remembered the one-digit numbers on it because he had never gone out in the field, remembered the day one count finally broke ten. Bucky's count. "Do you remember any of them?"

Tony nodded. "Three. You were at thirteen and James Barnes was at fourteen." They locked gazes. "Dum Dum Dugan was at twenty. Now I wonder how he felt the day someone's count managed to pass both."

"Probably like shit, because that's how I feel right now." Steve sighed. It was painfully ironic that Tony was the one talking to him about this. "It's nothing wrong with you, or the other Avengers, it's just… I feel horrible leaving him, leaving _them_ behind like that."

The inventor seemed to understand completely. "I know this isn't my place to ask, but if he was so much higher than you… how many times did you-"

"Seventy-one." Steve chuckled slightly. "Nobody got anywhere near that for him. If he was going to get himself into trouble, he made damn well sure I was the one getting him out of it. And so did I." Seventy-one times Hydra agents ganged up on him or a stray explosion threw him from his sniper's nest. Seventy-one times Steve was there… and one time he wasn't.

And suddenly Steve realized he had no idea what his count was for any of his new team. Especially not Tony. He looked up and knew his friend was reading his mind, and the low whisper that came out of his mouth was startling to both of them. "Thirty."

"Is that all?" he asked, startled, but it made perfect sense. Iron Man was not an easy man to save, encased in some alloy Steve could never name.

"That depends, honestly." Tony smiled, but it was a wavering grin. "Did you count outside of battle on your little charts?"

He thought about it, and one particular memory came to his mind. When Jacques had gotten very drunk and was stumbling around in the snow, and Bucky had led him back inside by the fire after hours of searching. Had there been a little unexplained tally mark on the chart, the next time Jacques had found a pen? Absolutely. "Yeah, we did. We do."

"Then, in that case, fifty-eight." No explanation was offered, none was requested. That conversation would come later, probably when they were both exhausted and Tony was just a little bit drunk. For now, it was enough that Tony was trusting him. "And you know technically I owe every one of that fifty-eight to Barnes."

He hadn't thought of it that way in a long time, but without Bucky there sure wouldn't have been any Captain America. And without Captain America, he supposed quietly, no Iron Man, not anymore. And, conversely, without Iron Man he would be dead a hundred twenty-seven times.

But it really did all trace back to Bucky. "It'll always be him, in a way, who is saving you," Tony told him, and the logic was a _little_ crooked, but it still made sense. "Without him I would be fifty-eight times dead, and then who would save your ass?"

"Or question my orders," Steve joked, but his mind was still on the Howling Commandos. On one moment in particular, where they had been walking through fire and twisted metal.

And a gunshot had pierced the quiet evening air, one nobody had been expecting, and a Hydra sniper (who must by then have been taking aim) had fallen. Steve had looked round, and Bucky hadn't even smirked, just let the spent ammunition fall and nodded at Steve's salute.

Without that moment, he never would have made it to the twenty-first century, never would have met Tony Stark, and none of this would have happened.

"You won't ever leave him behind," Tony explained, "because no matter how many people pass his record, he's still the reason you're alive today."

"To the end of the line," confirmed Steve, and realized he had never said those words since he got out of the ice. But they were still true. Until the very end of the line, the day he died, Bucky would be with him. "Thanks, Tony."

"Yeah, well, I'm the one who has to replace all these sandbags you keep breaking," his friend joked. "And hey, if it makes you feel any better, none of us will ever have anything on Clint and Nat's score. It's probably in the thousands, I get lost just _looking_ at those tally marks."

Steve snorted. "You have one score in the millions," he pointed out, expecting Tony to logically protest that _it doesn't count, they're not the same people._

Instead, he just quietly pointed out, "And if you hadn't saved me from the Helicarrier rotors, that wouldn't have happened. And if Barnes hadn't kept you alive, you couldn't have saved me."

Steve just smiled and nodded. It still hurt when he scored a single black line on the paper and returned it to the fridge, but he knew it was all right for someone to pass his best friend's record. He wasn't actually leaving Bucky behind. That was impossible.

And every tally mark he drew after that, even the three hundred ninth, would be in some fashion because of the Howling Commandos. Everything the Avengers did could be traced back to James Buchanan Barnes.

Steve was going to make sure it was one hell of a legacy.


End file.
